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The sports world may be on the edge of their seats as we draw close to the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But the “Olympics of the art world” is already well underway in Italy: Hundreds of thousands of art lovers are flocking to the Venice Biennale, which runs through November 24. This massive exhibition has been held every two years with very few exceptions since 1895, when it was inaugurated as the world’s first art biennial. Visitors who devote a whole week of their time will still only be able to take in a sliver of the art on display, whether it’s at the central exhibition, the collateral events, or the dozens of storied national pavilions in the Giardini and around the city. 

But that’s not all the exhibition has in store. The politics of the art world are also on full display, whether in the form of protests or the curators’ decisions about how their countries — with all their past and present controversies — will be represented. This year's included Russia offering its pavilion up to Indigenous artists from Bolivia, Brazil renaming its pavilion “Hãhãwpuá” after the Indigenous Patxohã term for the land, Poland welcoming an art collective from Ukraine, the United States featuring Jeffrey Gibson as the first Native American artist to have a solo exhibition at the pavilion, and Israel canceling its exhibition … which perhaps wasn't really canceled after all. 

Hyperallergic Editor-in-Chief Hrag Vartanian and longtime contributor AX Mina sat down to reflect on the aesthetic successes, political failures, and long-awaited representation they saw displayed at the world’s biggest contemporary art show. 

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• (00:00) - Intro
• (04:24) - First Impressions of the Biennale and the Main Exhibition
• (06:33) - India: Aravani Art Project
• (07:48) - Singapore: Charmaine Poh
• (08:58) - Lebanon: Omar Mismar
• (09:42) - “Italians Everywhere”
• (11:06) - Morocco: Bouchra Khalili
• (13:16) - The National Pavilions
• (14:21) - Benin Pavilion
• (16:12) - Lebanon Pavilion
• (18:19) - Italy Pavilion
• (20:14) - UK Pavilion
• (22:44) - US Pavilion
• (25:29) - Israel Pavilion
• (28:51) - Saudi Arabia Pavilion
• (30:07) - Nigeria Pavilion
• (32:11) - Egypt Pavilion
• (34:07) - Taiwan Pavilion
• (35:57) - Australia Pavilion
• (38:16) - Mongolia Pavilion
• (40:06) - “South West Bank,” collateral event
• (42:23) - Outro

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Shelley Niro (Kanien’kehaka) grew up watching her father craft faux tomahawks to sell to tourists who flocked to her birthplace, Niagara Falls. In this episode of the Hyperallergic podcast, she reflects on how witnessing him create these objects planted the seeds for her brilliant multidisciplinary art practice spanning film, sculpture, beading, and photography. 

She joined us in our Brooklyn studio for an interview, where she reflected on growing up in the Six Nations of the Grand River, the Native artists she discovered on her dentist’s wall but rarely encountered in a museum before the mid-’90s, and her latest obsession with 500 million-year-old fossils.

An expansive review of her work is currently featured in a traveling retrospective, Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, which was organized by Canada’s Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH), with support from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). The exhibition was co-curated by Melissa Bennett, senior curator of Contemporary Art at AGH; Greg Hill, an independent curator who is a former senior curator of Indigenous Art at the NGC; and David Penney, associate director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the NMAI).

When this interview was recorded, the show was on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. It was on display from February 10 to May 26 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and will be exhibited next from June 21 to August 25 at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. 

The music and sound effects in this episode are from the films “Honey Moccasin” and “Tree” by Shelley Niro, courtesy of the artist. 

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• (00:00) - Intro
• (03:02) - Beginnings of “500 Year Itch” Retrospective
• (04:18) - About “Honey Moccasin”
• (06:47) - Early Life
• (08:42) - The Six Nations of the Grand River
• (12:12) - Going to Art School and Native Representation in Museums
• (19:12) - Work in Painting
• (22:32) - Work in Photography
• (24:53) - On Niagara Falls
• (26:29) - History Behind Grand River Reserve
• (27:58) - The 1990s and Institutional Perspectives on Native American Art
• (31:12) - “Mohawks and Beehives” Series
• (34:51) - Why “500 Year Itch”?
• (39:47) - Art Schools Today
• (42:54) - Humor
• (47:27) - “In Her Lifetime” Series
• (49:57) - The Grand River
• (53:52) - Newest Works and Ancient Fossils
• (57:05) - Outro

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Tim Kang started his career as a software engineer for Deutsche Bank and invested a year of savings in Ethereum in early 2016, and let’s just say it’s paying off. The North Carolina native, who is known online as “illestrater,” is now a digital art collector and purchased works by Murat Pak and Beeple before all the recent auction sales and press coverage propelled them into the spotlight. 

He’s founded other artist platforms, including CUE Music and Universe.XYZ, and his latest organization, Sevens Foundation, is offering “Sevens Genesis Grants” for emerging and underrepresented artists to mint their first NFT. Kang calls himself a “champion of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists” in the NFT space.

I spoke to him to learn more about his interest in NFTs and collecting digital assets and his thoughts on the future of the field. 

This is a continuation of a series of podcasts we’re publishing on the evolving terrain of NFTs and their impact on artists and the arts community.

The music for this episode is “Autowave” by Kelly Moran from the album Ultraviolet, which is available from Warp Records.

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Why were women excluded from the art movement that has come to represent some of the best of 20th century American art? The answer may be rather complicated and Hyperallergic’s editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian interviews “Women Of Abstract Expressionism” exhibition curator Gwen Chanzit, Abstract Expressionism artist Judith Godwin, feminist art historian Linda Nochlin, and critic/curator Karen Wilkin to understand the issue.

In the third episode of the Hyperallergic Podcast, we talk to artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman about the For Freedoms Super PAC, which promises to shake things up during the 2016 US Presidential election by inviting artists to reflect on important topics during the run up to Election Day.

Our second podcast focuses on New York's borough of Queens, which is becoming a growing hub of artistic activity in the city. We talk to Tania Bruguera about her Immigrant Movement International project in Queens and her experience in Cuba, then we chat with artist Mariam Ghani about her commissioned mural at the Queen Museum, and finally we wander the Queens International biennial with director Laura Raicovich and guest co-curator Lindsey Berfond to discuss the exhibition's themes of accumulation and globality.

Our inaugural podcast sends our editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian to Morocco to visit the 6th Marrakech Biennial curated by Reem Fadda. There are interviews with the curator and artists Haig Aivazian (Lebanon) and Dineo Seshee Bopape (South Africa), as well as discussions of Superflex’s “Kwassa Kwassa” and Khaled Malas’ "Windmill in Eastern Ghouta (Syria).”

Diya Vij started her new job as Associate Curator of Creative Time just last fall, in the midst of the pandemic. She has since announced the first Creative Time Think Tank cohort, which includes La Tanya S. Autry, Caitlin Cherry, Sonia Guiñansaca, Namita Gupta Wiggers, and a number of other engaged voices of the art community. This new initiative invited people to submit proposals for an open call, drawing 200 individual or group applicants. The selected cohort will meet regularly for the next 10 months to reflect on the realities around us and imagine a way forward for the cultural sector.

Vij has built a reputation over the years for her work at the Queens Museum, High Line, and in the Commissioner’s Unit of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where she created the Public Artists in Residence program. She joins me to discuss this unusual think tank and what the collective hopes to accomplish.

Music is Lorenzo Senni’s “Move in Silence (Only Speak When It’s Time to Say Checkmate)” from Warp Records.

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Since 2001, Bitforms gallerist Steven Sacks has been exhibiting and selling digital art (though he hates that term) and building an audience and support network for artists working with new media.

After Sara Ludy, one of the artists Bitforms regularly exhibits, told Hyperallergic about her plans to negotiate new more equitable contracts for any NFT she sells, I decided to speak to Sacks to hear about his experience during this pandemic period when NFTs dominate many mainstream conversations about online and digital art. He talks to me about selling art, how things have evolved, and what he expects from this new wave of change. Galleries, Sacks suggests, will always be relevant.

This is the third podcast in a series of episodes and articles we will publish in the coming weeks on the topic of NFTs.

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Lindsay Howard is the head of community at the Foundation, one of the new platforms that have been part of the current wave of NFT art. She joined me in our Brooklyn studio to discuss the audience for crypto art and the collectors eager to fork over money for it. We also delve into what it could mean for an art scene facing the fact that the post-pandemic world may be very different for creators, sellers, collectors, journalists, scholars, and everyone else.

This is the second podcast in a series of episodes and articles we will publish in the coming weeks on the topic of NFTs.

Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.